Friday, August 14, 2015

The Unity and Authorship of Isaiah: In Defense of Isaianic Authorship

* I just finished up a ten week study through the book of Isaiah. Here is the handout I wrote up concerning the authorship of Isaiah.

The Unity and Authorship of Isaiah

by

Richard Klaus

August 2015

1.Isaiah 1.1 states, “The vision of Isaiah the son
of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reigns of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.”Up until the late 18th century most Bible
scholars accepted that Isaiah was the author of the entire book that bears his
name thus making the entirety of the book an 8th century B.C.
composition.[1]

2.Johann C. Doederlein (1745-1792) was the first
scholar to publish a systematic argument for a 6th century date for
Isaiah 40-66.[2]

a.Argument: Isaiah, in the 8th century,
could not have foreseen the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

b.Argument: Impossible to foresee the rise of
someone with the specific name of “Cyrus” 150 years before it happened

c.Isaiah 40-66 considered “Deutero-Isaiah”

3.Contemporary critical Old Testament scholarship
rejects the unity of authorship of Isaiah.

4.Arguments used to deny single authorship and
posit multiple authors:

a.Historical Situation

i.Chapters
1-39: setting is in Jerusalem in 8th century when Assyria is main
power

ii.Chapters
40-55

1.Audience is in exile in Babylon

2.Jerusalem and temple in ruins; anticipating
reconstruction

3.Cyrus the king of Persia mentioned by name
(44.28; 45.1, 13)

4.Exile is not being predicted but, rather,
presupposed by these chapters

iii.Chapters
56-66: “Trito-Isaiah” (“Third Isaiah”)

1.Thought to be post-exilic

2.“Arguments in favour of a post-exilic
Palestinian ‘Trito-Isaiah’ were based on considerations of structure, style and
background ideas.”[3]

c.Language and Style: these can be subjective and
subject to varying interpretation

i.Sometimes
40-66 is described as more “lyric, flowing, impassioned, hymnic”[5]

ii.Repetition
of various elements in 40-66

iii.Frequent
use of interrogative pronouns, imperatives, word-plays, and rhetorical
questions in 40-66

iv.Differing
vocabularies

d.Current critical scholarship has begun to
recognize a unity to the book of Isaiah but not a unity of authorship[6]

i.“Those
familiar with the legacy of Duhm in Isaianic studies may be surprised to learn
that, for nearly two decades, the dominant emphasis in the historical-critical
study of Isaiah has been on the ‘unity’ of the book.Marvin Tate calls this the new ‘one book’ interpretation in
contrast to the older ‘one author’ interpretation.In the past, critical scholars have largely overlooked or
undervalued the numerous intertextual connections and thematic continuities
between Isaiah 1-39 and Isaiah 40-66.Recently, however, these striking features have led a growing number of
scholars to posit an intentional relationship, even interdependence or a mutual
influence, between what is popularly known as First and Second Isaiah.”

This author adds:

“Although none of the scholars just mentioned would attribute the entire
book to Isaiah of Jerusalem, support for the basic unity of the canonical book
has been growing steadily within non-evangelical scholarship.”[7]

ii.Chapters
40-66 are a result of the prophet’s disciples or “school” of his followers
(8.16-18; 50.4).They preserved
his memory and applied his perspective in later generations

iii.Evangelical
OT scholar John Goldingay in The Theology
of the Book of Isaiah (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2014) accepts the
multi-author approach to Isaiah.[8]

1.1-39: Isaiah

2.40-55: Second Isaiah

3.56-66: Third Isaiah

“There’s no firm reason to assume
that ‘Second Isaiah’ was a single person who produced all of chapters 40-55
(though I myself think it likely) or that ‘Third Isaiah’ was a single person
who produced all of chapters 56-66 (I’m less sure about that question).Maybe there were a number of prophets
whom Yahweh inspired to further Isaiah’s ministry in this way.Further, it’s plausible that people
such as the hypothetical Second Isaiah had a hand in the development of Isaiah
1-39 and that the hypothetical Third Isaiah had a hand in the development of
the book as a whole.”[9]

4.This is new departure for evangelicals.

“Up
until the late 1970s, the consensus among evangelical scholars was to accept
the Bible’s claims about the human authorship of some of its books, whether
that be Isaiah’s authorship of the entire prophecy, the Mosaic authorship of
the Pentateuch, or the attribution of the psalms to David.This was the position taken by the
drafters of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.It is noteworthy that in almost as
brief a period as thirty years, there has arisen in American evangelical
scholarship a willingness to accept formerly liberal, higher critical views of
the Bible’s claims about authorship of particular biblical books such as
Isaiah, though some contemporary Old Testament evangelical scholars still hold
to the traditional view about this book.”[10]

5.“Now is the time to ask, ‘What has changed?’What new data compel many evangelicals
to abandon the traditional view of Isaianic authorship?The answer is, none whatsoever.In fact, there is more evidence for the unity of Isaiah than ever before.”[11]

5.Conservative Arguments for Unity and Isaianic
Authorship

a.Worldview considerations: growth of deism in the
late 18th century

i.“O.
T. Allis is correct in rooting the fragmentation of Isaiah is a
nineteenth-century rationalism which denied predictive prophecy—for if
prediction is impossible, the movement of Isaianic literature progressively
into the future can be explained only by the supposition of new authors working
in those later times.”[12]

ii.“With
the growth of deism in the late eighteenth century, it was natural that men of
antisupernatural conviction would take exception to those extensive portions of
Isaiah which exhibit a foreknowledge of future events.If the book was to be treated as of
merely human origin, it was an unavoidable necessity to explain these
apparently successful predictions as having been written after the fulfillment
had taken place, or at least when it was about to occur.”[13]

iii.“By
and large, however, the principal architects of the two-Isaiah theory have
simply assumed on rationalistic grounds the impossibility of divine revelation
in genuinely predictive prophecy.From this philosophical a priori viewpoint they have addressed
themselves to the actual data of the text.”[14]

b.Prediction of Cyrus by name 150 years ahead of
time

i.Persian
king who ruled 559-530 BC and captured Babylon in 539 BC

ii.This
specific predictive prophecy makes sense given the supernatural theology of
Christian theism; predictive prophecy is a sign of God’s power

iii.This
is in line with the theology of Isaiah 40-48 where Yahweh is challenging the
false gods to declare the future.Yahweh meets this self-imposed challenge by predicting with specificity
Cyrus

iv.Critical
scholars often see the Cyrus prophecy as vaticinium ex eventu—the idea that a
prophecy was written to appear as if it was given before the event but in
reality was written after the event occurred.

v.Greg
Beale properly notes the problem with this approach to Isaiah:

“To claim that these were not
prophecies at all, but history written to appear as prophecy, does not appear
to do justice to the polemic that Isaiah 40-66 is conducting.If those to whom this section of Isaiah
was originally addressed knew that it was not prophecy, then the polemic
against idols’ inability to predict becomes vapid and impotent.”[15]

Even if someone wants to argue
there is still a predictive element but the prediction of Cyrus is made by the
anonymous author of Isaiah 40-55 closer to the time of Cyrus, there are still
problems.Beale notes:

“Such short-range prophecy also
dilutes the polemic against the idols, that they cannot make long-range
prophecies.While short-range
prophecy can occur in the Old and New Testaments, the point of the Isaianic
statements supports a long-range perspective, as the following texts show.”[16]

vi.There
are other examples of specific long-range prophecies

1.1 Kings 13.1-2 predicts king Josiah by name some
300 years ahead of time

2.Micah 5.2 mentions the specific birth place of
the Messiah—Bethlehem—some 700 hundred years ahead of Jesus’ birth (Matthew
2.6)

2.Hundreds of words and phrases peculiar to Isaiah
occur in both halves

3.Looked at 15 different subjects across the
entirety of Isaiah to show common designations[17]

ii.“The
difference in the style of chapters 40-55 was an early argument for separating
them from chapters 1-39, and is still used as a means of distinguishing
authors, even though widely discredited.It is and always has been a nonsense.The Lord of the Rings,
for example, evidences a narrative style, a dialogue style and a poetic
style.Must it have had three
authors? . . . Like all the prophets, Isaiah filed for the future carefully
crafted encapsulations of his preaching.But the days of Hezekiah were followed by the ‘police state’ days of
Manasseh (2 Ki. 21:1-18), and maybe in such a time the now elderly prophet
would turn exclusively to writing: this is the real contrast between the two
styles, the one primarily a record of sermons, the other a solely literary
product.”[18]

iii.“It
is true that there is a high, poetic style chiefly concentrated in chapters
40-55 and this contrasts with the more workmanlike rhythmic prose or somewhat
less artful poetry in which the remainder of the literature is expressed.It would be misleading simply to say
that the one is the product of written poetic skill and the other the product
of the preached message, for what we have throughout the prophets is not their
verbatim messages as preached but a written distillation of their ministry…
Similarly, in the Isaianic literature both styles are literary products, but
the fact remains that the one impresses as never having existed other than as a
carefully crafted written exercise and the other as the preserved record of
spoken ministry… It is intolerably wooden and unimaginative to deny that one
author could produce both these styles.”[19]

iv.Moyter
notes a number of stylistic devices used throughout the entirety of Isaiah
(i.e., “extended doublets” and “arch/trajectory structures”).These stylistic devices cross over and
run throughout the book.Moyter
then notes that even on a date of 435 BC for “deutero-Isaiah” this causes
problems:

“But even this means that over a
period of three hundred years there was a continuing group (of which there is
no external evidence) so self-conscious in their unity that they maintained not
only a theological identity but also identity in presentational skills and in
the minutiae of literary styles and figures.This would register for the Isaianic literature a claim to
uniqueness beyond even what its inherent grandeur demands.”[20]

d.Geographical Indicators

i.Chapters
40-66 show little knowledge of Babylonian geography but great familiarity with
Palestine (example: trees mentioned are native to Palestine—cedars, cypress,
and oak; 41.19; 44.14)[21]

ii.“Topological
background is also important.While the Babylonian scene has not become clear, the Palestinian
background has not grown faint.The idolater goes out into the woods to cut a tree for carving (46:14),
not possible in Babylon!The trees
are those a Palestinian knows; the oils are those of West Asia (41:19; 55:13);
the landscapes and climate are those of the west—mountains, forests, sea, snow
and land refreshed by rain, not by irrigation.The claim that in chapters 40-55 we move into a Mesopotamian
milieu is not borne out by the evidence.”[22]

e.Historical indicators

i.Chapters
40-55 lack the first-hand feel of an author familiar with the Babylonian exile

ii.“There
is no evidence of eyewitness participation.The sort of detail by which an eyewitness would betray
himself is simply not there—observations about the city, the way its life is
ordered, the structures of its society, the feel and smell of the place.Nor, Whybray admits, do we find
attention given to problems existing within what he calls ‘the Jewish
community’.”[23]

f.Religious indicators

i.The
descriptions of idolatry in Isaiah 40-66 do not match the reality of exilic or
post-exilic Judaism

ii.“It
has apparently passed unnoticed by critical scholars that, with the exception
of the description of Babylonian idolatry in Isaiah 47:13, all other references
to such practices in chapters 40-66 are specifically to the pre-exilic
Canaanite variety mentioned in Isaiah 1:13, 29; 2:8ff.; 8:19; and
elsewhere.Such allusions in the
later chapters include 40:19; 41:7, 29; 42:17; 44:9ff., 25; 45:15ff.; 46:6f.;
48:5; 57:5; 63:3ff.; 66:3, 17.Of
these, Isaiah 44:9ff., 25, and 57:5 cannot possibly be interpreted as anything
other than Canaanite idolatry.If
this section was written in Babylon by an unknown prophet of the exile, as
liberal scholars have so commonly assumed, it is curious that the author should
have been so actively preoccupied with something which had long since become a
dead issue.The social and
religious background of this material is clearly that of the pre-exilic period,
as Kissane so ably demonstrated.”[24]

g.The disappearing prophet of “second-Isaiah”

i.“If
the so-called ‘second’ Isaiah was such a great prophet, how is it that all
trace of him has disappeared, and that his work was attached to the writing of
‘first’ Isaiah who in he eyes of the ‘critics’ was by no means as great as
‘second’ Isaiah?When one begins
to contemplate this problem seriously he realizes how difficult it is of
solution.Indeed, there is no
solution, and it is understandable that scholars have been so quiet about
it.From Isaiah 40-55 it is
impossible to learn anything about the supposed ‘second’ Isaiah whom the
‘critics’ think was the author of these chapters.All trace of him, who he was, where he lived, what he
did—all this has been lost.Yet,
we are told that he was the greatest of the prophets.Is it asking too much that those who refuse to believe the
Word of God should give us an explanation of how chapters 40-55 came to find
the place in the prophecy that they now occupy?What happened to the memory of this great prophet that his
works were attached to those of the eighth century Isaiah?”[25]

ii.“The
rest of the prophetic books show that the literary convention under which the
Old Testament was assembled was to preserve separate identity rather than to
allow the work of one prophet to merge with that of another—even down to
fragments like Obadiah.In the
case of the pinnacle of Old Testament prophecy, however, we are invited to
believe that this procedure was abandoned.It is easy to make up stories around the supposed anonymity
of chapters 40-55 such as that since the prophet of the exile was forecasting
the fall of Babylon he found it expedient to conceal his name.But even were this so (and it is a
plain case of special pleading), it is one thing for identity to be concealed,
another for a name to be lost and yet another for the work itself to be absorbed
elsewhere.”[26]

iii.“There
is, however, no external, manuscriptal authority for the separate existence at
any time of any of the three supposed divisions of Isaiah.In the case of the first Isaiah
manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qa), for example, 40:1 begins
on the last line of the column which contains 38:9-39:8.”[27]

iv.“If
Isaiah 40-66 was written by an unknown prophet, why include it in the canon
together with Isaiah’s book (Isaiah 1-39)?Why not make it a separate book following Isaiah’s, without
any attribution of authorship, which is the case elsewhere in the Old
Testament?There is no other
precedent in the Old Testament for such an extended segment (24 chapters) being
attributed to a pseudonymous author, though I realize that number of higher critics
would take exception to this statement.”[28]

v.Some
argue that a continuing group of Isaiah’s disciples—a school of
disciples—carried on the prophetic tradition in his name.This accounts for various thematic and
stylistic continuities.They point
to Isaiah 8.16 as textual evidence for this school of Isaianic disciples.Richard Shultz has aptly responded:

“However, this theory, which
originated with Sigmund Mowinckel in 1926, is rejected by an increasing number
of leading Isaiah scholars today—including Ronald Clements, Christopher Seitz,
Hugh Williamson, John Barton and Joseph Blenkinsopp—for several reasons:

·It lacks firm textual support, being based
primarily on a questionable interpretation of Isaiah 8:16 and the description
of Baruch in Jeremiah 36.

·It lacks logical cogency, since the existence of
the group is deduced from the existence of the book.

·It lacks historical plausibility.What basis is there for assuming that
an Isaianic school could exist for two centuries?”[29]

h.Closely aligned with (d-g) above is the issue of
the relationship of this non-Isaiah author in the sixth century to other of
Israel’s prophets.

i.“Taken
at face value this assertion would imply that there were still members of an
Isaianic school in existence up to one hundred and fifty years after the death
of the master, despite the influential career of Jeremiah, the catastrophe of
the exile for the inhabitants of the southern kingdom, the tribulation of the
early stages of captivity in Babylonia, and the fundamentally important
ministry of Ezekiel.Furthermore,
it would endeavor to assert that the Palestinian Isaianic tradition received a
new burst of life in Babylonia during the period of the exile with the labors
of an ‘unknown prophet’ who added to the prophetic corpus in the spirit of the
long-deceased master in language seldom paralleled for its beauty and majesty
of expression, but whose theology bore little relationship to the crucial
issues of the day as exemplified in the thought and teaching of Ezekiel.”[30]

ii.“On
the other hand, however, the work of a truly exilic prophet whose identity is
clearly known, namely Ezekiel, gives every indication of immediate and
continuing contact with the exilic situation, ranging from the typically
composite Babylonian beasts of the first vision (Ezek. 1;5ff.) to the use of
building terminology describing the foundation and summit of Babylonian staged
towers or ziggurats (Ezek. 43:14f.).”[31]

iii.“While
critical scholars have invariably tended to evade the issue, it still remains a
fact that the relationship of the work of Deutero-Isaiah to the accredited
ministry and writings of Ezekiel constitutes one of the greatest difficulties
in the way of the Second Isaiah theory, and it is of such magnitude that it has
never been resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned by an liberal scholar.

“Any attempt in this direction
would have to take cognizance of Ezekiel 2:5, which suggests that there was no
other prophet in the community who was issuing the same warnings of
Ezekiel.Again, in Ezekiel 22:30
God was represented as stating to the prophet that He had sought for a man to
stand in the breach but had discovered nobody.This would be distinctly surprising if the ‘unknown prophet
of the exile’ was actually living in the community at that time, and inspiring
his hearers to new heights of spiritual endeavor by means of his lucid and
stimulating utterances, as credited to him by the activities of critical
scholars.Surely under such
circumstances he would have been ideally suited for whatever tasks God had for
him to perform on behalf of the dispirited exiles.The evidence furnished by Ezekiel, however, points to quite
a different situation.”[32]

iv.“If
this unknown exilic individual were to regarded as anything more than a sheer
figment of the critical imagination, it would be necessary to establish his
place in the history of Hebrew thought and religious institutions.Despite his alleged exalted abilities
he was evidently completely unknown to Ezekiel and Daniel, and neither his name
nor his theological contributions played any noticeable part in the
representations of the post-exilic period by Haggai and Zechariah on the one
hand, or by Ezra and Nehemiah on the other.The facts of the situation are that it was the thought of
Ezekiel that influenced the nature of both Temple and synagogue worship in
post-exilic Judea, and the enthusiastic application of the Mosaic Torah by Ezra
that gave Judaism its characteristic stamp of legalism.”[33]

i.New Testament use of Isaiah: quotes from
Isaiah—including chapters said to be from “second-Isaiah” but the NT consistently
says the quotations come from “Isaiah”[34]

Matthew 3.3

Isaiah
40.3

Matthew
8.17

Isaiah
53.4

Matthew
12.17

Isaiah
42.1-2

Matthew
13.14

Isaiah
6.9

Matthew
15.7

Isaiah
29.13

Mark
1.2

Isaiah
40.3

Mark
7.6

Isaiah
29.13

Luke
3.4

Isaiah
40.3

Luke
4.17

Isaiah
61.1-2

John
1.23

Isaiah
40.3

John
12.38-41

Isaiah
53.1 and 6.10

Acts
8.28-35

Isaiah
53.7-8

Acts
28.25

Isaiah
6.9-10

Romans
9.27

Isaiah
10.22

Romans
9.29

Isaiah
1.9

Romans
10.16

Isaiah
53.1

Romans
10.20

Isaiah
65.1

Romans
15.12

Isaiah
11.10

i.“The New Testament speaks not so much of the
prophecy of Isaiah (although it does so speak) as of the individual man
himself…If one will examine the usage which the New Testament makes of the
prophecy he will soon see that the New Testament very definitely does intend to
attribute authorship to Isaiah.”[35]

ii.“Thus, in this particular quotation [John
12.38-41] both parts of the prophecy are tied together and both are attributed
to the eighth century Isaiah.In
as much as the New Testament is the Word of God, the question is settled.God has spoken, and we have but to
follow His Word, irrespective of what the latest ‘critical’ theories may be.”[36]

iii.Objection: “These
New Testament references are merely to the literary collection known as
Isaiah.They do not necessarily
mean that the New Testament authors were speaking of the literal prophet
Isaiah.”

a.“That the references are not made merely to a
literary collection but to sayings spoken by the actual prophet is apparent
from the specific personal language often used: there is allusion not typically
to the prophecy or prophecies of Isaiah but to Isaiah as a prophet.”[37]

b.“The cumulative effect of these references shows
no substantial evidence that such references could have been seen as merely
part of a literary work known as ‘the book of Isaiah.’”[38]

c.“The option that does not seem feasible is that
those writers were reflecting a stylistic convention that referred only to a
literary work known as ‘Isaiah.’At least, the early evidence about Isaianic authorship points away from
this option.”[39]

6.Conclusions

a.“If we are to read the book of Isaiah on its own
terms, it is necessary to take its superscriptions seriously.Isaiah 1:1 claims that all that follows
does not simply include but rather is ‘the vision of Isaiah son Amoz, which
he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah,
kings of Judah,’ a prophetic ministry spanning more than half a century.”[40]

b.“In this chapter I’ve tried to demonstrate that
the New Testament’s repeated affirmation of Isaiah as the sole author of the
book that bears his name is so clear and probable that to maintain multiple
authorship of it will, unavoidably, take a person down one path: the New
Testament writers and Christ were mistaken in their conviction about the
authorship of the book.For some
scholars this may not be a problematic conclusion, but for those of a more
conservative persuasion, this is a difficult position to hold.”[41]

c.“One’s position on this issue, especially in
recent times, can be an indicator of one’s overall view of the authority of
Scripture.”[42]

[1]
There were some who began to doubt the single authorship of Isaiah before the
18th century.Abraham
Ibn Ezra (1092-1167) is one such scholar.Ibn Ezra quotes the work of another twelfth century Jewish author—Moses
ben Samuel Ibn Gakatilla—as holding to a similar view.

[2]
There is a full and detailed history of the critical approach to Isaiah that
focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries up until the
1960’s in R. K. Harrison, Introduction to
the Old Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Prince Press, 1999 [reprint from the
Eerdmans original—1969]), 765-774.

[5]
This language comes from Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper Longman III An Introduction to the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1994), 270.They are not endorsing this argument.

[6]
“Arguments from conservatives for unity of authorship based on common themes
and vocabulary have now in large part been taken over and pressed into service
as arguments for a redactional unity in the book.”Dillard and Longman, An
Introduction to the Old Testament, 274.

[8]
In Richard Shultz’s essay (see previous footnote) he documents a number of
evangelical scholars who are adopting critical perspectives on the authorship
of Isaiah.See also Richard L.
Shultz, “Isaiah, Isaiahs, and Current Scholarship” in Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? A Critical Appraisal of Modern
and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture, eds. James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis
R. Magary (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2012), 243-261.

[9]
John Goldingay, The Theology of the Book
of Isaiah (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2014), 15.

[10]
Greg K. Beale, “A Specific Problem Confronting the Authority of the Bible:
Should the New Testament’s Claims That the Prophet Isaiah Wrote the Whole Book
of Isaiah Be Taken at Face Value?” chapter five in Beale’s book The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism:
Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority (Wheaton, Ill.:
Crossway, 2008), 124.

[17]
Common designations: (1) for God, (2) for Israel, (3) for introductory formula
for oracles, (4) for pairing Zion and Jerusalem, (5) for the ingathering of the
exiles, (6) for messages of consolation and encouragement, (7) for expressions
of joy and gladness, (8) for hopes of a universal millennium, (9) for words of
admonition and (10) chastisement, (11) in the use of thesis-antithesis pairs,
(12) in distinctive words and linguistic forms, (13) for word pairs, (14) for
similar constructions, and (15) for parallel groups having similar content.
Dillard and Longman, An Introduction to
the Old Testament, 271.

[29]
Shultz, “How Many Isaiahs Were There and What Does It Matter? Prophetic
Inspiration in Recent Evangelical Scholarship,” 167.

[30]
Harrison, Introduction to the Old
Testament, 789.

[31]
Harrison, Introduction to the Old
Testament, 790.

[32]
Harrison, Introduction to the Old
Testament, 790.

[33]
Harrison, Introduction to the Old
Testament, 792.

[34]
The following chart lists all the quotations that mention the prophet
Isaiah in the New Testament.This
list was compiled from Beale, The Erosion
of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism, 126-128.Beale also compiles all the direct references to Isaiah in
the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Philo, Old Testament Apocrypha and
pseudepigrapha, the New Testament Apocrypha, and the apostolic Fathers—see
pages 129-133.